WALKING THE MUSKOKA ROAD TODAY

ByLee Ann

It’s one thing to drive along part of Highway 11 and know you’re following the same route as the original Muskoka Colonization Road. It’s quite another to walk along part of the original road that still looks like it did 150 years ago.

This is the Muskoka Road as it looked back in the 1800s: a dirt pathway that gambols up and down and around and through some of the roughest territory in Muskoka-Parry Sound. This is the actual road just north of Huntsville:

Complete with ruts, minus the tree stumps, and maybe four feet narrower than in the 19th century, stretches of the original road can still be travelled, if not by car, then by foot or mountain bike. Picture yourself clinging to the side of the stagecoach along this stretch just north of the Big East River:

Remember that the road was maintained by the adjoining settlers under statute labour laws, which required every man over the age of 18 to provide two days of road work per year. But every man over the age of 18 was too busy trying to hack a farm out of his “free grant land” to do much road maintenance. Here’s part of James Matice’s 100 acres, which rises up along the east side of the Muskoka Road at the very north end of Chaffey Township:

In 1879, Matice and his wife Mary lived with their eight children in a shanty or log house right beside the road near this stone fence:

A little over a decade later the 1891 census shows no trace of the Matice family anywhere in Canada. I wonder why. Or is it obvious from the look of their land?

I plan to walk more sections of the original road – as much as is possible all the way to North Bay. But my adventure doesn’t begin to match that of the surveyors, settlers and entrepreneurs who made their way along this exact route 150 years ago.

BOOK WRITING 101: You Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends – And Strangers

ByLee Ann

I’m always amazed at how willing people are to help me with my writing project. Friends and family (mostly my husband) will listen to me blather on about my latest discovery, or let me read a chapter out loud, or come with me to some little museum or historical site while I page through rare books or take pictures.

But the most amazing is when complete strangers go out of their way for me. I had two instances of that last week. Carol Stevens heads up the Perry Township Historical Society, a tiny group of genealogists who are planning to put together a book about the history of their township. I contacted her not – as her brochure requested – to give her information but rather to ask if her group had any information for me about the Muskoka Road, which came through Perry Township on its way to North Bay. The group met and then emailed me all the information they knew, and sent me the names of several books to look up, two of which were new resources to me. Carol even offered to drive 20 kilometres to the Huntsville library to meet me, in case there was more I might want to ask her.

I also called Heather Crewe, Director of Education and Training at the Ontario Good Roads Association. I’ve been trying to find out if the “Good Roads Train” – a travelling, hands-on training program for road-builders that ran in the summer of 1901 – made any stops in Muskoka. (This is the kind of thing I wonder about these days.) I simply hoped Heather could refer me to someone in the organization who knew where their archival material was. But she spent a good 15 minutes on the phone with me, then rooted through her office, scanned in some pages from a couple of publications the OGRS had produced, gave me an on-line reference and two contact names of people she thought might know more.

This kind of thing happens a lot to writers, I think, judging from the long list of “thank-yous” that appear at the back of most books.

I’ve already started to build my thank-you list.

BOOK WRITING 101: How To Make Progress Even When…

ByLee Ann

I arrived in Muskoka a week ago with a goal: to do what Charlotte Gray calls “walking around research” for the next two chapters I need to write. This means exploring resources that can only be found locally, interviewing local people who know the Muskoka Road and Muskoka history, combing through unpublished manuscripts in small-town libraries and driving parts of the road.

While travelling to Muskoka I lost my voice (and it stayed lost for five days.) I developed a deep, barking cough and felt my energy collapse like a snow-cone in this Ontario heat wave. I think I picked up a bug on an Air Canada flight just days before I left for Muskoka.

So much for interviewing people. So much for energy and focus. So much for working during the week and enjoying the weekend with friends and family at the cottage. Yesterday – the first day my energy felt normal, my voice was nearly recovered and, thanks to constantly drinking cough suppressant, I could allow myself to go out in public – I came up with a new plan. I’ve looked at my original goal, looked at my time remaining (five days) and divided the specific things I wanted to do into “Must Do” and “To Do Next Time” lists.

Must Do:

  • Get to Parry Sound District and at least visit two of the small communities that used to be on the road: Emsdale and Burk’s Falls. Find their local libraries and see if there is any primary source material there: family histories, memoirs, diaries that relate anyone’s direct experience with the road or homesteading on the road.
  • Arrange to meet the people in Muskoka who I’ve previously emailed or phoned and who have information to share that can help me.

To Do Next Time

  • Everything else that was on the list: all the other towns in Parry Sound District, all the other libraries and historical sites, all the driving of the road.

OK, maybe the original list was a bit ambitious for a two-week timeframe. That would be typical of me. Maybe I have to spend more of August in Muskoka than I planned. And maybe September too.

Well, I can think of worse consequences from a summer cold.

At least I had this to look at while recuperating:

View from the dock

CENSUS INFORMATION: 1871 and 2011

ByLee Ann
Spring in my Garden

It’s spring, and the government’s mind turns to: census-taking! That’s true in 2011 and was the same in 1871. The census is of course a great source of data for a researcher like me. The census has also recently been controversial – the Chief Statistician resigned over the government’s decision to shorten the census this year and make part of it voluntary.

This week I filled out the 2011 census – online, a very cool option – and also spent time in the 1871 census of Muskoka. I noticed a few interesting differences between the two census questionnaires. Which I suppose is to be expected as they’re 140 years apart. 

For instance, we no longer ask everyone how many acres they have under crop. Or what livestock or how many carriages they own. Or if anyone in the household is “deaf, dumb, blind or of unsound mind.” Questions about “Daily Living” do form part of the “National Household Survey” (the optional part of the 2011 census,) although the method of questioning about that kind of thing is now much more polite: “Does this person have any difficulty hearing, seeing, communicating, walking, climbing stairs, bending, learning or doing any similar activities?”

The question of religion is not part of the 2011 short form census. Nor is ‘profession, occupation, or trade’. Nor is ethnic background.

Marital status has gotten quite a bit more complicated. In 1871 you were either single, married or widowed. In 2011, you could be:

  • never legally married
  • legally married (and not separated)
  • separated (but still legally married)
  • divorced
  • widowed… OR (asked in a separate question)
  • living with a common-law partner.

In 1871 there was no question about what language you spoke – fascinating for a country of immigrants. Speaking of which, I’m researching the 1871 census records of two immigrant families:

  1. The Simintons of Morrison township. They were among the very first settlers along the Muskoka Road and had been singled out in the Provincial Land Agent’s 1859 report as being “particularly intelligent and industrious.” I think by 1871 they had abandoned their land and fled to Manitoba.
  2. Ira Fetterley of Chaffey township. I found only one reference that specifies the Muskoka Road ended at his farm in 1865. All others say it ended somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Vernon. I would much rather learn about Ira Fetterley and use his story to talk about the end of the road! So I am hoping the enumerator made some kind of reference to the government road in a note on the Fetterley record.

That is another difference, 140 years later: there is no place to make a note!

WRITING TIP: Play Can Result in Progress

ByLee Ann

My theme for Chapter 5 is “Don’t Work So Hard.” That’s the theme for my process, not Chapter 5’s contents. Chapter 5 is about a 10 year period that marked two key turning points for the Muskoka Road:

  1. It extended north out of Muskoka and into the Parry Sound District; and
  2. It met its biggest challenge: the railway.

My biggest challenge to date has been the tendency to work really hard and worry about the imperative of getting the first draft done. It’s a pressure-cooker of my own making; one I’ve decided to get out of. Whew! Too hot in there.

So I will write Chapter 5 in a different way, having as much fun as I can. I started by reviewing the outline – yes, that wonderful document! – and reminding myself of the stories I get to tell in this chapter: New road-building technologies.  Another harrowing description of a stagecoach ride up the road.  “Manitoba fever.”

I’ve paused to savour the richly named cast of characters:

  • Thomas Nepean Molesworth, engineer.
  • James Hankinson Jackson, storekeeper, census-taker, community-builder.
  • Anson Greene Phelps Dodge, lumber baron and railway promoter – who was known as “Alphabet” Dodge because of his habit of signing his name with all three of his initials.

And I’ve been reading late-1800s newspapers from Pennsylvania. Muskoka was heavily marketed there, to “sportsmen” looking for adventure and escape from the coal-fueled city. The personal columns carry tales of several fishing clubs and a group of judges and “other prominent jurists of the State” camping on Lake Muskoka. Not all trips were idyllic. One man was emotionally scarred by the sounds made by a bullfrog he was trying to kill for dinner. Another sustained a serious cut on his knee in an unfortunate flag-raising incident. But one fisherman vowed he had found the definitive protection against Muskoka’s black flies: forget the mix of pennyroyal and almond oil, what you really want is equal parts tar and pork fat.

Hey, cottage opening weekend is coming up. You gotta be ready!

I’m not sure any of these stories will make it into Muskoka’s Main Street. But they’ve given me a sense of the district during a certain brief time in its history. That’s fun. That’s also progress.

WHO GREW THE TURNIP: How Much Research It Takes to Tell a Story

ByLee Ann

I wonder if readers have any idea how much time it can take to write a sentence. I’m not talking about a sentence that is just well-crafted. I mean a sentence that is accurate and rich with detail. In a non-fiction book like Muskoka’s Main Street it’s really important that the stories I tell are not only well-crafted – by this I mean clear – but also correct and informative. 

SPOILER ALERT! I have this great sentence in Chapter 3: “Moses Martin, a 66-year-old Canadian, grew the turnip on Lot 9 East of the Muskoka Road in Morrison Township.”

Here’s what it took for me to write that one sentence.

First of all, as you, my faithful followers will know, I’m talking about THE turnip. The 16 kilogram mammoth prize turnip that was grown along the Muskoka Road in 1860 and paraded around as definitive proof Muskoka was a good place for farming. (Muskoka wasn’t, and isn’t, but that’s another story.)

I first read about the turnip in Muskoka and Haliburton 1615-1875 A Collection of Documents by Florence B. Murray. Surveyor J.W. Bridgland (my favourite surveyor who wrote all the blunt reports) mentions the turnip in his 1861 inspection report to the Commissioner of Colonization Roads.  Of course I wanted to include this in the book!

Then I found R.J. Oliver’s “Report on Free Grants on the Severn and Muskoka Road.” He was the government land agent in the district and he says he actually had the turnip in his possession! It’s a white turnip weighing, he says, 14.7 kilograms. Maybe it dried out a bit in the time it took for him to write his report, but never mind that. He also says the turnip was grown on Lot No. 9 East Morrison.

Ah ha! This sent me to Library and Archives Canada again, where I had already planned to go to look at the 1861 census. That year, the census consisted of a personal report – with names, ages, ethnic origins etc. – and an agricultural report, which gives acreage, crops grown, livestock held – AND the lot and concession numbers where people lived.

“Lot 9 East Morrison” means the 9th lot on the east side of the Muskoka Road in Morrison Township. Who owned that lot? Moses Martin, identified on the Agricultural Census. Who was he? A 66-year-old born in Upper Canada, living with his wife Catherine and four sons, all labourers: Moses Jr., 21, John 17, William Edward, 14, and Robert Henry, 12. They lived in a shanty – which is not nearly as fancy as a log house – on their 100-acre lot, where they also grew spring wheat and potatoes and made maple sugar. Oh, and they also had one pig.

Now I can write a sentence! And not just the sentence I got from an excellent but still secondary source, Murray’s textbook. A sentence that is rich with detail and one that gives information that I’ve never seen published before: the name of the actual guy who grew the famous turnip.

One sentence: about half a day of research, not counting travel time.

What do you think – was it worth it? Are you surprised at what it took?